by Sleepinghookah
Hair: Gentle burgundy curls that fall to her shoulders with some damage from when she was in middle school and thought she had to flat iron it twice a day.
Growing up, money had always been tight in the Evans household so by the time she is twenty, Lily has worked no fewer than twelve different jobs. There was the paper route, the nanny gig for the bratty triplets, enough waitressing so that she would never again be able to enjoy going out to dinner. Most horrifically was her three months at the butcher shop, where she slogged through mountains of innards every day and came home smelling so rancid that Petunia would refuse to let her in the house until she housed off on the front lawn.
All things considered, her new job at the coffee shop isn't that bad.
Lily finds she rather likes preparing the coffee, taking her time with the measurements to produce the perfect espresso. She is a veritable champion of foam art. None of her coworkers can create shapes – hearts, lightning bolts, leaves – in the foam quite like Lily can. She'll take the mickey out of anyone who tried to claim that she is an artist. Even the title barista seems too pretentious. Like, it's just a minimum wage gig, and if she is such an artist, shouldn't they let her choose her hours? But a little part of her that she'll never admit to glows at the praise all the same.
The real trouble with her job is that she has to talk to the customers. They, the masses of poor taste, would rather have their coffee a minute sooner than appreciate the mastery that she spends in prepping their drinks.
And, God, nothing brings out the pretentious assholes quite like a neighborhood coffee shop.
Everyone is the next Jack Kerouac. Everyone is a prodigy seconds away from being discovered. It is almost impossible to tell all her customers apart in the sea of scarves and carefully distressed skinny jeans.
Lily would be quite content to just silently judge her clientele except the shop's policy is that their employees have to be friendly. That's what is supposed to separate them from the big coffee chains and the corporate sellouts. Their customers aren't just buying a cappuccino, they were buying the right to feel special.
The first time he comes in, Lily only takes notice because he's dressed for a day of bumming around in your apartment or helping a mate move houses. His gym shorts are loose and a garish red and his sweatshirt has holes in it that don't look like they've been artfully ripped presale.
Others take notice too. He's pretty good looking in way that makes you want to take a second look because you're not quite sure he actually is. Then a third because wow he's really fit. Then a fourth because you've changed your mind and you're not sure again.
He'd look better with trousers on, Lily decides immediately. This boy is far too skinny – calves narrow sticks of bone and skin – to be boldly wearing shorts about in public, but the rest of him is alright. And there's something beautiful about his mouth. Since mouths aren't something Lily normally notices when she meets a person, she knows that means his mouth isn't just good, it's exceptional.
When he orders, he barely gives her a glance, eyes sliding right over her face as he looks up at the list of specials hanging above her head. And she's the biggest hypocrite in the world because it irritates her. How many times has she complained to Marlene about all the men who come into the shop and size her up like she's on the menu? Too many to count, that's for sure. Yet, here she is, lowkey bothered because this knobby-kneed stranger isn't.
She knows she's pretty. Lily's gotten enough offers from skeazy modeling agents over the years to know that. Him taking a second look would just be common politeness.
He orders a black coffee. Lily's been working long enough to know that everyone thinks their drink order means something. Like it's the equivalent of a zodiac sign. They give you a little wink when they order anything pumpkin spiced to let you know they're in on the joke. Anything that takes more than five seconds to say means they want her to know that they know their coffee inside and out. And don't get her started on the people who come in and order a fucking smoothie.
Black coffee from a girl means that she's either the baddest bitch in town or trying to impress a date. There's no in between. For men, it's their way of announcing that they're a true man's man. Their hearts are just as dark as the drink before them.
Lily's pretty certain she could make those men cry.
He gives her the name James, and she sets about making his order. Quick and efficient. He doesn't seem like the type who would appreciate frills, so she just heats him up a cup and gets ready to move on to the next customer.
It's then that she notices that he can't stop moving. She's not sure what someone who's been struck by lightning would look like, but she thinks it might be this. His hair, sticking up in every direction, doesn't do much to dissuade her of the notion. He snaps his fingers, hops from foot to foot, nods his head to an imaginary beat. Lily thinks this might not be his first cup of caffeine for the day. She wants to find her boss, Slughorn, and ask if they are legally obligated to refuse service to someone clearly already on such an intense caffeine high, like how bars can't serve you when you're obviously intoxicated.
Because he's either already on his sixth cup of coffee of the day or he's on cocaine. Which, to be fair, is practically the same thing. Cocaine's just adult caffeine.
"Are you okay?" she asks because she'll feel responsible if he keels over and has a seizure because she was too self-involved to bother to check.
He looks at her, really looks at her for the first time, and smiles. "Yeah, super actually."
He says it with such genuine enthusiasm that she doesn't know what to do, just passes him his coffee and goes back to work.
All thoughts of wiry, messy-haired boys disappear from her mind. She doesn't have time to think about anything other than her two jobs (she's also a retail clerk at a Macy's) and night classes at the local community college. Occasionally, she makes time to feel bitter when she watches the privileged university students stroll past the coffee shop. They come in and complain in loud voices about how they can't possibly be expected to ace their classes and intern, as if Lily isn't doing just that plus extra.
A week later he's back though. And then the week after that and the week after that. She learns that his name's James Potter and he's one of those very privileged college students. There's a soccer field next to the coffee shop and he's started an intramural team to stay in shape while he waits for the official season to start up again. He's the captain of both.
"There's a field on campus, of course, but I like this one. This neighborhood just feels real, you know?" he tells her.
Lily never knows what "real" means when people use it like that, so she just shrugs. She spends most of their conversations just shrugging as he spews out unsolicited information like they've known each other for years. It's always on the tip of her tongue to let him know that they're not friends. After all, she hates when customers get too familiar, but he's endearing in a way that disarms her, so she lets it go.
Another time he tells her he really likes her hair, "It's…what's the word? Vibrant! You have vibrant hair. You should always wear it down."
Lily's used to people commenting on her hair, but not young people, not boys. It's usually the old customers who can't get enough of it. Once she was in a Walmart and an old lady started stroking it with no warning. She's been kind of cold on hair compliments ever since.
"Well, fuck you. I'll wear it however I like," Lily says even though she knows it's a bad idea to curse at the customers because, compliment or no compliment, she's not going to let any man, especially not a practical stranger, tell her how she should dress.
He laughs a lot, perfect mouth stretched wide, and her boss doesn't find out.
Over time, he starts coming even on days when his intramural team isn't meeting for practice. These are the days where he's kicking the ball around with his friends just for something to do because he doesn't have to worry about things like making rent or budgeting to buy his future nephew a Christening present (Petunia's six months pregnant).
He brings Sirius for the first time about a month later. Sirius has a football tucked under his arm, but he's not dressed for a game like James is at all. (Lily has yet to see James wear anything but gym shorts and hoodies). No, Sirius has a leather jacket and obscenely tight skinny jeans and a smile that's too sharp for comfort.
They're having a loud argument about whether or not Sirius should cut his hair. Sirius thinks it's time for a change, and James is not having it.
"You are your hair to me!" is something James actually bellows at one point in their conversation.
"If it makes a difference, I think your hair looks great," Lily offers when they reach the front of the queue.
He twirls a long, lock of dark hair around his finger and rolls his eyes. "Fine, I won't cut it."
Lily thinks his concession has more to do with appeasing James than anything she has to say on the matter, but James thanks her profusely for stepping in. He's beaming and Sirius is trying to pretend he's not amused and Lily decides then that maybe she doesn't dislike all of her customers. Not even close.
Eyes: Emerald green (not pickle-green, Petunia), usually surrounded by a lot of smoky eyeliner and a tube's worth of mascara because a girl's got to look her best even if the only people who are going to see her are her shitty customers and even shittier relatives.
Lily's never liked high-society functions. Not that she's ever been invited to one, but she's heard enough glowing praise from Petunia about how marvelous it is to share a table with one of the VPs from Vernon's drill firm to know that they're not for her. She'd take the food, and happily, but if Petunia likes the people in attendance, the company has to be a disaster.
She figures that working a high-society function isn't really the same thing though, so when she's offered a one-night gig waiting tables at the Becton Literacy Dinner for Underprivileged Youths, she jumps on it. Despite everything she says to the contrary, she's actually really excited to be an aunt, and she knows that Petunia has literally zero expectations of her. Like, Petunia probably wouldn't be surprised if Lily just gave her a coupon to a McDonalds for her baby shower present, so Lily's scrambling to put together enough money to prove her wrong.
The event has a 1920s flapper theme, so Lily's hair has been stuffed in a wig – black and cropped short – and she's wearing a dress that catches and reflects the light off each individual bead. Not that she'd ever admit it, but getting to pretend to be someone else for the night is kind of fun. She and the rest of the wait-staff have concocted elaborate backstories for all of their characters and giggle in the kitchens as they talk in ridiculous Russian accents and sip on the guests' unfinished gin and tonics.
One of the waitresses, Dorcas, used to work with Lily at a bookstore downtown, and they get to catching up almost immediately. Dorcas is bright and fiery and they've exchanged numbers before the night is even halfway out.
Unlike at the coffee shop, they're not encouraged to talk to the guests, which is fine. Lily is free to bustle between tables, topping off coffees and wiping down spills without having to talk about her day (which blew) or discussing how much she too cared about the underprivileged youth (hello, she was one of them).
Right before they're about to serve dessert, Dorcas's arse of a boyfriend calls and starts hassling her about how she never has time for him, and she's always working, and blah blah blah. Lily feels bad because Dorcas starts crying, mascara smudging down her cheeks. Lily gives her a Burt's Bee's makeup wipe from her bag and agrees to take over her tables in the back so that she can sort it all out. Secretly, Lily thinks she should dump him, but that's why Lily's single and Dorcas has a boyfriend.
At one of her tables is an obnoxious blonde family – obnoxious both in behavior and in how overtly blonde they are – that snipe at her to bring their coffee faster and talk loudly about how if poor people want their lives to improve they should just stop being poor. Real charitable.
She's so distracted by thoughts of how she could "accidentally" drop a lemon meringue pie on that snooty woman's Valentino that she almost misses that James is there. He's sitting a table over from the blondes, chin propped on his hand and looking bored to death.
It's the first time that she's seen him outside the coffee shop and it takes her by surprise how good he looks. She's known he has money. It's obvious in the way he speaks (plus there was that one time he and Sirius came in and ordered one of every type of pastry they served and hardly blinked when the total came out to 150 pounds.) But, she's never seen him dressed up before, and he pulls it off well. The suit he's wearing shows off his built shoulders and his mussed up hair gives him a look of boyish rebellion that she grudgingly has to admit is working for him.
It's working on her.
Lily waits until all of her tables are dealt with for the moment before she goes over to talk to him. When she does, she says, "Hi, there, my name's Delilah Smirnov. What's yours?"
It's the name she's created for her fake backstory in which she's the runaway wife of a mob boss looking for a hitman to take out her husband. The end goal being, of course, to take over his empire with her much younger lover. Maybe she's seen one too many noir films.
Delighted, James laughs and tells her his name is Baron Ruschkov and are they related? He follows this up by telling her he sincerely hopes not, and Lily licks her lips. James has always been an obscene flirt, but this feels different. Maybe it's because she's different. She's not in her ugly work apron, tired from a long day of work. No, she's in a costume gown and she's a Russian mob wife, and she can be anyone she wants to be.
"No, seriously though, my name's James," he says laughing.
"I know," Lily says, rolling her eyes because obviously. It's cute though and he looks ridiculously happy that she's remembered him (as if she could forget, she's talked to him at least twice a week for the past three months). It's then that Lily decides she's going to go home with him that night.
They get to talking and Lily learns he's there because his mum is Vice Chair of the foundation. Only, she actually cares about improving literacy unlike the Malfoys, who James assures her are the worst. He went to private school with Lucius, though James was a few years younger, and he's pretty sure Lucius was behind the town's only mosque burning to the ground. Lily finds laughing at the Malfoys less funny after that and makes sure to spit in his coffee before she serves it to him.
Her every break is spent talking with James. They spend an embarrassing amount of time polishing off their respective backstories. They talk about their favorite drinks, and Lily gives him a hard time when he says his is a Fuzzy Navel. Unsurprisingly, he had it the first time as a joke because he liked the sound of the name so much, but then he was hooked. He promises to make her one sometime, and she thinks it would be nice to turn the tables and have him serve her for once.
Mostly they make fun of the other guests.
By the time the event is over, Lily is a little past drunk and very much ready to get James out of his suit. Since she covered for her throughout the night, Dorcas agrees to take over Lily's part of the cleanup and she's able to walk right out with James like she's one of the guests and not just the help.
They don't wait to make it back to his apartment, snogging enthusiastically in the back of their cab. The driver turns up the music – Bob Marley – to drown them out, but it's no good when James starts kissing her neck as they don't make radios that play louder than the sound of her moaning. When she bites into his shoulder, James kind of howls and then they're both at it, making obscene noises and forcing their cabbie to speed up in the hopes of getting their horny asses out of his taxi as soon as possible.
They have to stop making out so that James can fumble for his keys at the entrance to his flat. He drops them three times because Lily keeps nibbling at his ear and being an all-around distraction.
His place is disgustingly nice (as in expensive) and ridiculously trashy (as in he's filled it with paintings that don't match the décor and it's furnished with empty beer cans). There's an enormous fake-rhino head hanging above the TV. Lily thinks she would enjoy getting a tour as there totally has to be a story there.
Sirius is lying on the couch, flipping through the channels too fast to possibly comprehend what he's looking at. His eyes are hazy and he looks stoned out of his mind. When she sends him a hasty hello, his gaze drifts over her uncomprehendingly. James, single-minded in his focus, doesn't acknowledge him at all, too busy dragging Lily in the direction of his room.
"You know," Lily says when she's in James' bed with nothing but a bra on. "I don't normally go home with guys like this."
It's true for the most part. Just this side of a lie.
But she hasn't laughed this much in ages, and she wants more evenings like this. All of the questions about what this means that seemed so unimportant just minutes ago are now crashing down around her. She's never struggled with the concept of a one-night stand before, mostly because she's always the one who does the leaving. Lily imagines it must feel very different to be the one who's left behind.
"Listen, I like you, like, a lot, and I don't want this to be a one-time kind of thing," James says, tenderly cupping her face with one hand and giving her a look of such sincerity it makes her melt. "You're amazing."
It would be a lot more romantic if the fingers of his other hand weren't buried inside her as he says it. Pace never slowing even as he promises her there will be a tomorrow and a tomorrow after that.
These kinds of declarations always make Lily feel panicky (even if her heart does flutter a little at them coming from James), so she slithers out of his grasp and pushes him down on the bed. She rides him hard until he stops saying such sweet nothings, stops saying anything altogether except for grunted out pleas of "Christ!" And it's fucking good.
He passes out immediately after, body sprawled out and filling every corner of his bed. Normally, she'd leave around this point, except he's promised her a tomorrow, so she removes her wig, which has fallen askew and is practically dangling off her shoulder at this point, and snuggles up into his side.
Skin: Pale and freckled with three moles on her chest, one of which really interested James last night.
It is almost embarrassing how eager Lily is to see James again. She hasn't seen him since the night of the dinner as she's had the past three days off to focus on midterms and a mythical, little thing called sleep.
When she woken up the morning after, he'd still been fast asleep, snoring lightly and looking far too peaceful to disturb. She'd given him a kiss on the nose and he'd made a half-hearted attempt to pull her back in bed, eyes never opening, but she'd evaded his arms and ducked out the door. Knowing she'd see him in a few days, she hadn't left a number, figuring that would look too desperate.
In preparation for seeing him now, Lily has spent a lot of time on her makeup and she looks good. Like, really good, like lips painted red and wearing fucking eyeshadow good. Her mum snorted when Lily walked out the door this morning. Even she knows that Lily only wears eyeshadow when she is looking to score.
He's not alone when he comes in. He's brought Sirius and two other friends he sometimes plays with. A part of her is irritated that she won't get to talk to him alone, but then she reasons that he probably just wants some moral support and can't fault him.
When he gets up to the counter, he stares at her hard for a second, eyes narrowed in concentration on her made-up face, before saying, "You look different."
"You look the same," she shoots back because what else is she supposed to say to that?
He gives her a heart-melting grin but then he's turning away to talk to his friends and she's forgotten. They're all browbeating the pudgy one called Peter because he wants to stop for froyo, and Sirius is arguing, "Then, why'd we come for coffee, Pete? Hmm? We're not getting both!" and James is insisting that "We can squeeze one more game of soccer in. Forget the yogurt!"
James doesn't ask for her number and he doesn't bring up the other night and it's then and there that Lily decides she hates James Potter.
She glares at him through gold-shadowed eyes until he notices. Sheepishly, he runs a hand through her hair and for a second she thinks he's going to do the right thing, but then he's dropping a dollar in the tip jar and giving her a thumbs up and turning back to his friends again.
It takes a level of will power she doesn't know she possessed to stop herself from dumping a pot of boiling coffee over his head. He deserves nothing less, but that's a guaranteed way to lose her job and she would totally be brought up on assault charges. Plus, she knows the Potters have enough money to hire a bomb-ass lawyer for civil court, so she holds back.
She calls Dorcas up on the phone that night to talk about it. Like a true friend, Dorcas says she can't believe he has that kind of nerve and calls James every variation of scumbag under the sun. It's not like Lily was crying about what happened, but she was feeling pretty shaky and hearing a confident, reassuring voice makes her feel better.
Dorcas warns her that she has an ex just like James and that guys like that consider it winning if you act upset after. They like to know how much you wanted them because it boosts up their pathetic egos. Lily decides that she'll play nice at the shop, act like nothing ever happened, take part in the same bad flirting as before. Because she refuses to let James win anything. Not against her.
She has the errant, terribly unwanted thought that nothing like this has ever, will ever, happen to Petunia.
At first, it's hard. In the war of sugary smiles and unaffected banter that they're waging, James is very good. Never for even a second does he let show that he remembers their night together, that she's anything other than his favorite waitress at his favorite coffee shop. It kills her.
As the months roll by it gets easier. Lily never forgets, not even for a second, how he lied to her, but she doesn't have to fake her laughter when he comes in wet and as ornery as a cat from a match in the rain, and the conversation starts to flow easily between them all over again.
They talk about books. She tells him about her love of modern day fairytales and how she could spend the whole day locked in the library reading short stories by Angela Carter. He tries to convince her that graphic novels count as real literature. When she doesn't budge an inch, he promises to bring in his favorites for her some other time.
And he does, plopping several Alan Moore comics and the first volume of The Sandman on the counter the very next day. She finishes all of them that month and can't deny that The Sandman is a lush, beautifully drawn fairytale after her own heart.
She discovers he's studying mechanical engineering. Lily had figured it was probably a degree in sports therapy or something equally mindless.
Lily's so surprised, in fact, that when he tells her, she sputters out, "But don't you need to be like, smart for that?"
Turns out he is smart though he rarely applies himself. As finals roll around the corner, there's no escaping work even for James Potter, so he starts coming into the coffee shop laden down with books and binders with other students' copied notes to prep for exams. Lily's in the same boat with her own exams, though she's majoring in chemical engineering, which is indisputably superior, so whenever the shop isn't busy they sit side by side and study.
They're both taking Thermodynamics, so he quizzes her on flashcards and she reads through his essays for typos. He has a complicated relationship with commas. When he's concentrating, he sucks on his pen, and she learns to never accept a writing utensil from him because they're all chewed up nubs by the time he's finished. Frequently, it's her pens that die at his hands.
He doesn't come in at all one week in June, and Lily can't decide if she's happy about it or not. She should be. She knows she should. But a part of her has become accustomed to seeing him three or four times a week. He's a part of her routine, and she doesn't like change. Never has.
At least, that's what she tells herself when she lies in bed at night wondering where James could be. She thinks that he'd better have a pretty good excuse. Not for her, of course, but for his team. How were they expected to play without their Captain?
He's in again a week later and tells her that his dad died. He'd been old, so James supposes that it ought to have come as less of a shock, but it was. And it's hit him hard.
He looks awful. James and Remus – one of his other friends – look, for the first time, like they might be brothers: they share the same under-eye circles like half-crescent bruises punched into their skin, the same ashen pallor like they've never heard of sleep, eyes constantly red-rimmed.
Wanting to help and feeling utterly helpless in the face of such loss, Lily tells him his coffee is on the house for the entire week. It's not really and she has to cover it out of her own wages, but he almost smiles when she tells him, so she figures it's definitely worth it.
Resentment for what he did lingers, but it becomes harder and harder to care. It seems impossible that the talkative guy who chats her up three times a week is the same one who dropped her so callously. Time passes, and Lily forgets to hate him.
Chin: Not much to say about it as it's…you know a chin. It's a stubborn chin, a chin that she tilts up when she's rearing for a fight. The greater the angle between her chin and neck, the more the object of her rage ought to start running.
Saturdays are always terrible. She doesn't even want to be awake before noon on a Saturday, let alone running a register. So she's grouchy from the start. Worse, somewhere along the line, her little coffee shop has become the place to be – a glowing review in some hipster newsletter called it the "last authentic shop this side of the river" – so the line is long, and Lily scarcely has a moment to think as she takes orders at top speed.
She groans when she sees James and Sirius enter the shop because Lily knows from past experience that James doesn't give a shit how busy she is. He'll still expect her to spend a minimum five minutes listening to him prattle on about his day. Oblivious even as the queue stretches out the door behind him.
Sure enough, when he reaches the register, he asks, "Can I talk to you for a second?"
There's sweat on his brow, which isn't unusual since he almost always comes in after a game. What is different is the look of anxiety on his face and the way Sirius is watching their every move from his table in the corner.
"Um…yeah?" Lily agrees because it's not like he's ever asked her permission to talk to her before.
His hands twitch – running through his mess of hair, scratching down his arms like an addict – and he blurts out, "Do you want to get a coffee with me sometime?"
"What?"
"Fuck, right. Of course you don't want to get coffee. Where would I bring you? Here?" he laughs at the thought. "A drink, then? Next weekend. You and me."
"Like a date?" Lily demands because she needs to be sure.
He brightens. "Yeah! Exactly like a date."
There must be some kind of deity watching over James Potter because when Lily grabs the nearest drink to dump over his head, all thoughts about lawsuits forgotten, it's just a mango smoothie. James splutters as icy chunks drip down his face and smear along his glasses.
"What the hell?" he gasps.
Slughorn, of course, walks out of the breakroom in the back for the first time that day just in time to see Lily throw a drink at one of the regulars. So he's shouting about how she's fired and James is shouting about how she could have just said no, and Lily is ignoring both of them. She balls up her apron, drops it on the counter, and walks outside with every intention of never returning.
Lacking any sense of self-preservation, James follows her. He doesn't even take the time to wipe off the smoothie, so he's standing on the sidewalk with orange fruit-chunks in his hair.
"My brother's a policeman, so if you start stalking me, I'll tell him to shoot you," Lily lies.
"Please don't," James says, and any other time she would have found that funny, but now she's too angry, too offended, to see anything but red.
"I cannot even believe you have the nerve after all this time to ask me out. If I hadn't already seen them, I'd think your balls have to be the size of your humongous head," Lily snaps.
James looks suddenly hopeful, "So if I'd asked you out sooner, you would have said yes?"
Lily thinks she grows three inches taller in her rage, "It would only have been a matter of time before I found out what a douche canoe you are and dumped you anyway. Honestly!"
"Sorry, I guess I just misread the signals. I thought we had a connection," James says tightly like she's the unreasonable one here.
"We had a connection. Emphasis on the past tense. If you really wanted to date me, you should have asked after we fucked, not waited another four months to be sure," Lily says, hating that she cares and hating him more for making her care. She knows she sounds needy and desperate, but she can't seem to stop herself.
At her words, James' eyes widen and he looks genuinely confused. Then, he starts to laugh, a laugh of childish enthusiasm complete with slapping at his knees like the whole thing's one big joke.
"Are you telling me," he wheezes, "that you're Delilah Smirnov from that charity thing? That's so fucking – all this time you've just been here!"
Lily decides then and there that she's going straight to Sev's and asking that he and his shady friends put James in the hospital. They haven't talked in like, nine months, but Lily knows he will if she asks. And boy is she going to ask.
She can't believe that he didn't fucking recognize her. James had stared straight at her while she rode his dick for all it was worth, and he just oopsie, never put two and two together. It's probably the single most offensive thing that's ever happened to her. Far worse than just pretending nothing happened for four months and then changing his mind.
That is, if he's not just lying to save his skin, which she totally wouldn't put past him.
When she starts to stalk away, he grabs her by the wrist and says, "Listen, I have this thing, this medical thing that…Fuck, you're never going to believe me. Here, let me get Padfoot to explain."
James motions for Sirius, who's pressed to the glass watching their drama play out like it's an afternoon soap. When he comes out, James orders eagerly, "Tell her about my face thing!"
What follows next is one of the most impressive cover-ups that Lily's ever born witness to. Reluctantly, she has to give Sirius points for his sheer brazenness as he lies for his friend.
Sirius tells her that James has "face-blindness" where he literally can't tell people apart. In a crowd of people, James can't even pick out his own mother.
"Do you think I'm fucking stupid?" Lily demands and Sirius smirks at her in a way that promises nothing kind.
"Hand to my heart, he's telling the truth! It's a hereditary thing," James insists. "I have to memorize little cues about people to spot them out or I'm lost. For you, it's the hair, but if I saw you at like, the grocery store, I'd never pick you out because I wouldn't be expecting to see you."
Lily scoffs and James whips out his phone and tells her to call his mother. She pushes number two in his phone to dial up his mother, and her heart totally doesn't skip a bit at how endearing it is that his mom is that high in his list of contacts. She answers.
James watches, bouncing from foot to foot, while Euphemia Potter clinically describes her son's condition.
Prosopagnosia turns out to be a condition where the part of the brain that differentiates between human faces never fully develops. Euphemia describes it as like looking at a forest. James can tell each tree looks different, but if you moved the trees' locations, he wouldn't be able to tell you which he'd spent the day staring at. James is reliant on context and memorized physical traits to tell his friends apart: Euphemia always wears a red scarf whenever she's meeting him out in public and Sirius first grew his hair out to make things easier for James.
Lily's left speechless as James wraps up the call with his mom, promising that he and Sirius will drop by for dinner that night.
"What's this all about anyway?" Sirius asks, bored.
"She's Literary-Dinner-girl! Remember? The hot waitress?" James says.
Sirius's eyes light up in recognition. "Right. You two were fucking loud."
Lily opens her mouth to defend herself, which she can't even really do as they had been pretty noisy, but Sirius is already walking away. He claps James on the shoulder, before leaving them to their privacy. Or the illusion of privacy anyway as he's just going to spy on them through the window once more.
Lily stares at James, still not sure what to say, which is fine because, like always, James has plenty to say for the both of them.
He tells her how disappointed he'd been when he woke up and she was gone that morning. How he'd just about torn his apartment to pieces looking for a scrap of paper where she might have left her number. How day by day he'd fallen more and more for her at the coffee shop as he learned how hard she works and how much she cares for her family even when they're obnoxious like Petunia.
All told, Lily probably lets him blather on with compliments about how she's a wonderful person for far longer than strictly necessary. Her gut unclenches when he tells her he loves how nasty her sense of humor is when she's tearing into someone she despises. Her shoulders relax as he says that he'd have failed his Thermo final without her help and that she's a goddamn genius. Her scowl lifts when he says he's read all of Angela Carter's books now. And that even though they aren't his cup of tea, he's happy he did it because he likes how loud she gets when talking about her passions and he can't wait to discuss them with her.
He doesn't once call her beautiful or sexy or talk about her tight ass and it's this omission that sets off the butterflies in her stomach. Because he doesn't like her because she's hot – even though she totally is. He doesn't even really know she's such a catch as his brain isn't wired that way.
For the first time in her life, Lily is sure that a boy likes her for who she is as a person.
Lily kisses him while he's mid-sentence, still listing off her best qualities. The kiss is sticky as he's dripping ice all over her, but he tastes like mangoes and she doesn't mind at all.
As he kisses her, enthusiastic and sweet, Lily realizes that maybe James isn't the only one who's blind. Without a medical condition to blame, Lily has been just as blind since the first day he walked into the shop. Opening her eyes so that she can look at him as he kisses her thoroughly, Lily thinks to herself that she's never going to close her eyes again. Not where James Potter is concerned.
And they have a long future ahead of them.
Lily: A girl made up of pieces – of riotous curls and expressive eyes, freckled skin and a stubborn chin. A girl who is so much more than the sum of her parts. Described by various parties throughout her life as: awful, dear, gorgeous, slaggy, lazy, and generous. A woman, who in one year's time, one James Potter will call "the love of his life."